While farmers plant millions acres of plants like rye and clover to boost soil health and crowd out weeds, a cover crop does the same thing in the smallest home garden. With cover crops, a vegetable ...

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... For an Earth-friendly garden, keep a succession of plants in the soil by planting cover crops. These are plants grown to improve the soil rather than for ...

Healthy soil leads to healthier crops, lower input costs and more sustainable success. More farmers are discovering cost savings and benefits of building healthy, living soils. With practices like ...

Regenerative agriculture methods, such as cover crops, are one way farmers try to improve the health of their overworked soil ...

According to the Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy, an initiative aimed at reducing nitrogen and phosphorus runoff into Iowa’s ...

Planting dry beans into spring cover crops could be a measure to protect young plants from damaging weather conditions like wind or hail. Dry beans are susceptible to damage from wind and other ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – No one wants to think of harvest’s end as the vegetable garden reaches peak, but now’s the time to plant over-winter cover crops to improve your soil for next season. If you’re not ...

Cover crops play an important role in protecting the soil and water when cash crops like corn or soybean are not actively growing. The National Conservation Service promoted the use of cover crops ...

No one knows who first invented the idea of using cover crops to protect soil in agriculture fields, but by 6000 B.C. farmers ...

AMES, Iowa – As vegetable growers and commodity farmers reach the end of the growing season and harvest their crops, faculty at Iowa State University are pushing for greater awareness of cover crops ...

The use of cover crops in Iowa has expanded significantly in recent years. The conservation practice, which has been shown to reduce erosion and enhance soil health, is promoted by the state through ...

New research from Iowa State University, that builds on research released last fall, finds that only 6.6 percent of cover ...